Inventions

Did your investigations produce interesting new results? Are you currently planning the associated publication? If so, now is the right time to consider whether an invention you have just discovered is also of commercial importance because it can, for example, be used in industrial or commercial applications. Pursuant to the German Employees’ Inventions Act, you are obliged to report such inventions to your employer. If it is an employee invention, the employer will check if he wants to file a patent application. As such a check takes time, you should timely report inventions, for example, when you start to write a publication and not shortly before the actual publication. A precondition for the granting of a patent is that an innovation must be new and sufficiently stand out from the state of the art. This means that it must be based on an inventive step and not be obvious. These criteria ensure that not every minor invention results in an intellectual property right that could also block the progress in the relevant area. Before your employer decides whether he wants to make use of your invention and file a patent application, he must therefore check if the chances and costs of the grant of a patent are in reasonable proportion to the economic potential of your invention. If he makes use of your invention, he must pass on 30% of all income earned with the patent to you, the inventor employed by the higher education institution (or the inventor team). Further income will often flow into the research budget of the involved departments.

The following institutions have instructed MBM ScienceBridge GmbH to evaluate their invention declarations:

Invention declarations are to be submitted by you to your higher education institution or research facility, preferably after prior consultation of MBM ScienceBridge GmbH. The current forms for an invention report are available to you in our Download Section.